"Can we drill?"
"Nope. At those velocities, impact would cause detonation, the combined velocities would look like a detonation wave to the explosive. After all, darned few explosives can stand shock waves that propagate through them at a few thousand miles per second."
"O.K. How do we drill?"
"We might drill electrically," suggested Farrell. "Put a beam in front?"
"Not a chance," grinned Channing. "The next time we meet up with Hellion Murdoch, he'll have absorbers ready for use. We taught him that one, and Murdoch is not slow to learn."
"So how do we drill?"
"Wes, is that non-arcing alloy of yours very conductive?"
"Slightly better than aluminum."
"Then I've got it! We mount two electrodes of the non-arcing alloy in front. Make 'em heavy and of monstrous current-carrying capacity. Then we connect them to a condenser made of Farrell's super-dooper dielectric."
"You bet," said Walt, grinning. "We put a ten microfarad condenser in front, only it'll be one hundred and thirty farads when we soak it in Farrell's super-dielectric. We charge it to ten thousand volts, and let it go."